“By the time they arrived, they found that he had been pulled onto the other side of the river mouth, on the reservation side,” Cameron said.

The Port Angeles Coast Guard base dispatched a boat.

“When we were called, he was about 200-300 yards from land,” Ashworth said.

“By the time we got there, he was in trouble, paddling, about 800 yards from land. He was fighting the current.”

The Coast Guard did not identify the surfer.

The surfer is not from the Port Angeles area and is probably relatively inexperienced at the sport, said Shawn Canepa, president of the Olympic Peninsula chapter of the Surfrider Foundation who was informed of the rescue's circumstances.

The Elwha River has been running very fast and strong because of the weekend rainfall, producing very strong currents near the mouth, Canepa said.

“It's not a riptide, but it's the exact same principle,” he said.

Canepa said the surfer was waiting for the next set of waves, and probably didn't realize how strongly the current was pulling him away from shore.

“The current is just ripping out there,” he said. “You can't see it on top of the water.:

Canepa said experienced surfers know to paddle with the current but toward shore, but the surfer on Sunday tried to paddle against the current.